Lt. Col. Farhad Safi is an idealistic, young police commander in charge of a “ring of steel” of traffic checkpoints cordoning central Kabul against car bombers and suicide attacks.

When Safi asked last month for mobile cameras to monitor his force, Graham hustled up a demonstration model of the system and got U.S. military contractors to install it on the police station’s roof while he pressed Afghan officials to release funds for the requested purchase.

Never mind that mission day for the surveillance cameras turned out to be the opener of the summer fighting season. Insurgents rocketed Graham’s base that morning and the European police advisory team he works with was on lock-down. But Graham packed his troops and cases of electronics into a convoy and sped across town to see Safi.

The injustice and humiliation of having to pay bribes for basic public services are sources of daily outrage among Afghans, according to one observer quoted in a U.S. government report. As for Safi, “The magic about him is he really believes he can change things, that things can be better and there doesn’t have to be corruption,” said Graham, a West Point professor with a doctorate in social network analysis.

Critical juncture

With the deadline looming to withdraw international combat troops by the end of this year, coalition forces are scrambling to do all they can to leave behind a sustainable Afghan national security force.

Accomplishing that goal in one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world has always been a challenge. It will become more so as the coalition’s military footprint shrinks and projects become more difficult to supervise, John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told the U-T San Diego editorial board last week.

“We spent too much money, too fast, in too poor a country with too little oversight,” Sopko said. Controls against waste and fraud increased over the years, but the U.S. is at a critical juncture as its combat forces pull out. Security gains could erode as direct oversight of reconstruction spending diminishes, Sopko said.

Since the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Congress has appropriated nearly $103.2 billion to rebuild that country. What have the American people gotten for their money and the coalition campaign’s objective to prevent Afghanistan from reverting to a terrorist sanctuary?

“From a security point of view, it looks like it’s working,” Sopko said. “The Afghan national security forces ... have done a pretty good job on their own.

“When you get into the governance side of your traditional reconstruction activities, the concluding chapter isn’t done. But we have seen some serious problems,” he added.

Bottom ranking

Last year, Gen. John Allen, then-commander of international forces in Afghanistan, told President Barack Obama that “corruption is the existential, strategic threat to Afghanistan.”

A study initiated by Gen. Joseph Dunford, the current coalition commander in Afghanistan, and released on Feb. 28 by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff said “corruption directly threatens the viability and legitimacy of the Afghan state.

“Corruption alienates key elements of the population, discredits the government and security forces, undermines international support, subverts state functions and rule of law, robs the state of revenue and creates barriers to economic growth.”

The report concluded that U.S. reliance on warlords and logistics contracts, coupled with a deluge of military and aid spending, overwhelmed the Afghan government early on, fostering corruption. A subsequent lack of political will by the international community and Afghan officials to combat it helped create a culture of impunity that “rendered almost all counter-corruption efforts moot,” the study said.

In its latest analysis, issued in 2013, Transparency International ranked Afghanistan as tied with North Korea and Somalia for the most corrupt nation in the world.

The biannual National Corruption Survey released Wednesday by Integrity Watch Afghanistan listed corruption as a major concern for an increasing number of Afghans, topped only by security. The most common form of corruption, bribery, nearly doubled during the past four years as access to public services also increased, the Afghan civil society organization reported.

The judiciary and police were viewed as the most corrupt institutions, while the Ministry of Interior overseeing the police was perceived as slightly less corrupt than in 2012.

The insurgency is strengthened by widespread corruption because “it increases the gap between the citizens and the state. The international community is also viewed as not having lived up to its international commitment and discourse to address corruption,” Yama Torabi, executive director of Integrity Watch, said last year.

Document

Fighting corruption in a destitute country flooded with foreign aid is a moving target, as one program designed to combat pay-skimming from police salaries demonstrated.

The U.S. has contributed about $1.21 billion to pay Afghan police salaries through the Law and Order Trust Fund Afghanistan, established by the United Nations Development Program. The fund’s finances are so mismanaged that the European Union is withholding 100 million euros until better spending controls are adopted, Sopko said.

Most police officers are paid through electronic bank transfers. About 18 percent of the force, primarily those in remote, dangerous areas, lack access to banks and are paid instead by “trusted agents.”

A pilot program started in 2010 to pay police through cellphone transfers revealed that as much as 50 percent of salaries distributed through “trusted agents” was siphoned off. That would amount to about $45.5 million this year alone, analysts in the Inspector General’s Office concluded.

“Ensuring that police officers receive their salaries is critical to creating an honest, reliable and sustainable police force,” Sopko wrote May 28 in a letter to Dunford and commanders of the coalition’s Combined Security Transition Command — Afghanistan.

The cellphone payment program is slated to expand from 1,100 to 3,200 participants over the next year, coalition commanders reported. But corrupt supervisors started registering their own phone numbers to resume pay-skimming from subordinates, the inspector general told Congress in April.

Making sure systems work properly to get pay, parts and other necessities to troops is key to combatting corruption, as is increasing the skills and confidence of the force, said Marine Col. Bill McCullough, the officer in charge of a team in Laskhar Gah that’s advising the Helmand provincial police chief.

“When systems don’t work properly, how do you get what you need? By who you know, by who you can pay,” McCullough said.

But his advisory team can only do so much. “Corruption is something that has to be addressed by the Afghans themselves,” he said. “Corruption will get solved when the Afghan leaders determine that’s what they want to do.”

Quality people

The Kabul chief of police, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Zaher Zaher, is progressive by Afghan standards, said Graham the Army colonel. Zaher pushed to recruit female officers and replaced some of the old guard with younger, more flexible commanders.

His officers are also aggressive and prone to slap recalcitrant citizens at traffic stops. “Their customer orientation has some issues,” Graham conceded.

Among Afghan national forces, Kabul has about 14,000 police officers and 4,000 soldiers protecting it. “I have a lot of people. I don’t have a lot of quality people,” Zaher told Graham. People who can read, who know computers, who can analyze intelligence.

Safi, the “ring of steel” commander, is fluent in English. His family’s wealth from a mattress business insulates him from the temptation to line his pockets, which makes him “the future of Afghanistan” in Graham’s eyes.

On the way to Safi’s station, the convoy trailed an Afghan police truck loaded with men brandishing rifles at vehicles that won’t steer clear.

Police in white hats used small placards to wave traffic through the gridlocked streets, past the occasional armored vehicle and a peaceful political protest against the mayor. Demonstrators complained about sewage flooding the streets after heavy rains and massive corruption.

“That guy just did a shake-down. He came out of that vehicle with a bag in his hand!” Graham said, observing a policeman at a traffic stop.

At another checkpoint, an Afghan policeman eyeballed each passenger inside Graham’s vehicle. “Look at that. Eyes on, I love it! It can appear menacing but ...,” there are worse threats.

“The number one problem out here is corruption,” Graham said. “It has undermined the checkpoints. They’re supposed to provide security, but they become a place where the people get ripped off. ...

“Where you can pay to get through or don’t check the women in burqas, it’s a slide into anarchy, into allowing that bomb through.”

Cameras, Toblerone

The convoy drove through a series of gates past a sign in English saying, “Ring of Steel.” The police station is more military outpost, complete with barracks because of the danger of getting shot if officers had to return home each night.

Graham and his staff carried in two large boxes of fliers for police to distribute at checkpoints. The fliers explain why travelers are inconvenienced by frequent stops. “Plant trees, not bombs,” they said, and “If you see it, stop it.”

The advisers climbed a ladder onto the roof to set up the cameras and test the zoom function. Safi, however, was nowhere to be found.

Graham was marveling at the city view and the Afghan method of cleaning carpets by laying them under passing traffic when he was summoned by cellphone. The police chief wanted to consult with him about a theft ring.

At the entrance to Zaher’s offices at police headquarters, the Afghan security chief gave Graham a hug that lifted him off the ground. The pair have been in many firefights together since Graham assumed his latest job in January.

Up the worn, red carpeted stairs in Zaher’s office, the police chief received a line of supplicants. The dialogue was along the lines of “Oh sahib, my family is out of money. Can I get an advance on my police pay? ... Oh sahib, this guy is building on my land. Can you send your men over to kick his teeth in?”

Safi, the missing police subcommander, is there, getting certificates of appreciation for his staff and a lecture from his boss. A female parliamentarian was outraged that Safi allowed traffic police to remove window tinting from her vehicle. Although Safi had the support of his command for enforcing the law, a televised complaint from the indignant parliamentarian required some political showmanship by Safi’s boss.

The young commander was nonplussed about threats to have him fired. “Can you do it now?” he gamely replied, according to Graham.

Safi circulates among his checkpoints often, but he can’t be everywhere at once. The wireless cameras, “that will help me understand my officers. If they are taking bribes or doing anything wrong, we can advise them,” he told U-T San Diego.

“Letting trucks pass by without checking them, that is not good for our future. And their future too. That vehicle might have explosives,” he said.

The average traffic cop makes about $185 a month, a sum easily expended on rent alone in Kabul. “No one likes taking bribes, but their salaries are less. They need food,” Safi said.

His family is financially secure. His wife and four children live in Dubai, where it is safer. And his younger brother studies in Mississippi.

Safi dips into his personal funds to pay bonuses to his top performers, he said. “If I can feed my soldier and give him what he needs, he will stop taking bribes.”

As Graham exited the building, the ground was shaken by a muffled thud. “Too close,” he said, gauging the distance.

Before he pulled out of the compound, Graham rustled up a bribe of sorts for his Afghan convoy escort. “I hate leaving and not giving these guys anything,” he said.